History of Icehouse Games, 1987-1998

Icehouse, even when it was originally created, was a game set,
rather than a game. Andrew Looney
first described Icehouse in his 1987 short story, "Icehouse,"
which became the basis for his short novel, The
Empty City. In it, he described in meticulous detail a set
of unusual game pieces and the way they were used in social situations,
though with an annoying vagueness on the details of how the game
itself was actually played.

John Cooper, a close
friend of Andy's, took those basic concepts, added some breakthrough
ideas of his own, and created a cool and interesting game that
really seemed to have the feel of what Andy had been describing
in his stories. Unfortunately, though, as soon as Andy and John
started showing people the game, they realized they had a problem:
there was no way for people to buy a set of the game pieces.

Discouraged by stories of how difficult it is for an independent
game designer to sell a game idea to a large game company, they
decided to form a company of their own in order to make and sell
Icehouse game sets. They were joined by Charles Dickson (who had
ideas on how to make pieces) and Kristin
Wunderlich (she and Andy were merely dating back then) who immediately
took charge of the business end of running the business, eventually
becoming known as the Icehouse Business Czar.

Icehouse Games, inc. never had more than a shoe-string budget
and some part-time volunteer employees, and as a result, never
produced a major run of game sets. But they did manufacture short
runs of icehouse sets in a variety of formats, including wood,
plastic, and cardboard, and they ran an annual tournament
every year for 8 years. But in the end, it was clear that the
icehouse set was too expensive and esoteric a product to start
a company around, and so the corporation was dissolved.

But as it often is with things like this, that wasn't the end
for Icehouse. Having spent so much time and energy (and money)
getting pyramid shaped playing pieces made, it seemed logical
to start inventing other games you could play with an Icehouse
set. Andy cooked up several strange little games, and John created
a masterpiece of game design called Zarcana,
which uses icehouse pieces on a dynamic game board composed of
tarot cards. Icehouse tourney champions Keith
Baker, Dan Russett, and
Jake Davenport also created
new games for icehouse pieces. And with all these other
games to play with an Icehouse set, it seemed clear there'd
be interest in them again some day.

After Icehouse Games was dissolved, Andy & Kristin decided
to form a new company, called Looney
Laboratories, in order to publish the card game Fluxx.
Armed with the lessons learned from Icehouse, and a game that
was much easier to learn and vastly cheaper to produce, they finally
began acheiving some success in the board game industry. And with
that success came the opportunity to breathe new life into the
set of Icehouse games.

A lot has happened since the text above was
written, in 1998. Check out the current
top level pages for the latest versions available, and see
the Out Of Print page for
a more complete history of the system.